Cindy Tumiel: Taking clues from Mother Nature

Plenty of drugs at the pharmacy initially were derived from plants or other materials found in the natural environment. One of the best examples is Taxol, a common and useful chemotherapy drug, which was first derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree. The discovery came in the 1960s, when the tree was one of some 35,000 species of plants screened by the National Cancer Institute for activity against cancer cells.

Now closer to home, a San Antonio scientist has identified a compound that appears to damage human prostate cancer cells. The substance is derived from the bark of the Amur cork tree, a species that is native to regions of northeastern China and western Russia. The tree bark has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat stomach and kidney ailments and is included in some Western nutritional supplements.

A. Pratap Kumar, an associate professor of urology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, exposed human prostate cancer cells to the tree bark extract and found that the compound killed a high percentage of them. While results are promising, a lot more research is needed before people rush out to buy tree bark supplements.

Kumar now has a grant that will allow him to test the compound in laboratory mice, the next necessary step.

The compound appears to block the activity of a protein called CREB, which helps malignant cells survive, Kumar said.